Before you purchase a savings plan, you must determine your required savings plan based on your actual resource usage. You can purchase savings plans based on the recommendations of Alibaba Cloud. You can also evaluate potential savings plan purchases and then purchase a savings plan on the savings plan buy page. When you evaluate potential savings plan purchases, you must consider the discounts provided by each savings plan based on various conditions, such as your budget, the billing method of resources, and the resource usage duration. Then, you can select a savings plan type, resource configuration, hourly commitment amount, payment option, and savings plan duration based on the calculation results. This topic describes how to calculate and evaluate potential savings plan purchases and purchase a savings plan that meets your resource usage requirements.
Workflow for purchasing a savings plan
Before you purchase a savings plan, you must calculate and evaluate potential savings plan purchases. Alibaba Cloud provides savings plan recommendations based on your resource usage. Alibaba Cloud also provides methods and examples on how to calculate and evaluate potential savings plan purchases. You can calculate and evaluate potential savings plan purchases and go to the savings plan buy page to place an order based on the calculation and evaluation results.
You can upgrade existing savings plans. For more information, see Upgrade a savings plan.
On the savings plan buy or upgrade page, the total payable amount for the savings plan is determined based on the hourly commitment amount (Committed Amount) and the duration (Duration) parameters, and the resource usage that the savings plan can cover per hour is determined based on other parameters. We recommend that you purchase a savings plan based on the recommendations of Alibaba Cloud or the results of manual purchase calculation and evaluation. If you have other discounts, the discounts may be applied. The payable amount displayed on the savings plan buy or upgrade page shall prevail.
Purchase a savings plan based on Alibaba Cloud savings plan recommendations
Obtain savings plan recommendations based on your historical resource usage
If you purchased pay-as-you-go Elastic Compute Service (ECS) or Elastic Container Instance resources and want to reduce resource costs, you can view the savings plan recommendations on the Savings Plan Purchase Scheme Calculation page in the Expenses and Costs console.
On the Savings Plan Purchase Scheme Calculation page, configure the Type, Duration, and Payment Method (payment option) parameters and click Calculate. Alibaba Cloud recommends savings plans and hourly commitment amounts based on your specified conditions and calculates the expected savings.
If a recommended savings plan meets your business requirements, click Buy to purchase the savings plan.
Customize savings plan recommendations based on your resource requirements
If you never purchased pay-as-you-go ECS or Elastic Container Instance resources, you can configure instance settings on the Savings Plan Calculator page and follow the on-screen instructions to customize savings plan recommendations.
On the Savings Plan Calculator page, configure instance settings and click Add to List.
In the upper-right corner of the Savings Plan Calculator page, click Savings Plan Calculator to view the savings plan recommendations.
If a recommended savings plan meets your business requirements, you can purchase the savings plan.
Calculate and purchase a savings plan
If the Alibaba Cloud savings plan recommendations do not meet your business requirements or cannot be generated due to insufficient historical usage data, you can calculate an hourly commitment amount based on your resource usage and purchase a savings plan on the savings plan buy page based on the calculation result. The following figure shows the workflow for calculating and purchasing a savings plan.
View the discounts provided by different types of savings plans on the Discount Details page in the Expenses and Costs console, specify a savings plan type, a duration, and a payment option to create a custom savings plan scheme, and then take note of the discount provided by the savings plan scheme.
Calculate the hourly commitment amount based on the discount, your purchase information, and the list prices of eligible resources.
After you calculate and evaluate the savings plan scheme, go to the savings plan buy page and configure the parameters based on the calculation and evaluation results.
Specify an effective time for the savings plan and place an order to purchase the savings plan. The purchased savings plan takes effect at the specified time and is automatically applied to offset the fees for eligible pay-as-you-go resources.
When you purchase an ECS compute savings plan, if the instance family of the ECS instances to which you want to apply the savings plan is included in an available ECS instance family set, we recommend that you select By Instance Family Set and then select the instance family set. The savings plan provides the same discount on the ECS instances regardless of whether you select the instance family set or the instance family. However, a By Instance Family Set savings plan is more flexible than a By ECS Instance Family savings plan.
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View discounts for savings plan-eligible items
Savings plans provide different discounts for various eligible items. Multiple factors affect the discount provided by a savings plan for an eligible item. You can view the discounts provided by various savings plans on the Discount Details page in the Expenses and Costs console. For information about savings plan-eligible items, see Eligible resources and deduction rules of savings plans.
The discount provided by a savings plan for an eligible item varies based on the following factors:
The duration of the savings plan. A longer savings plan duration indicates a higher discount. Three-year savings plans provide greater discounts than one-year savings plans.
The payment option of the savings plan. Savings plans of higher upfront payment options provide higher discounts. All Upfront savings plans provide the highest discounts, followed by Partial Upfront and No Upfront savings plans.
The type of the savings plan.
The instance family of the eligible instances to which the savings plan applies.
The region of the eligible instances to which the savings plan applies.
When you calculate and evaluate potential savings plan purchases, take note of the following item: Given the same hourly commitment amount, savings plans that provide higher discounts for an eligible item can be used to offset the fees for more resources that belong to the item.
Select a savings plan type
You can purchase general-purchase or ECS compute savings plans to offset the fees for pay-as-you-go ECS or Elastic Container Instance resources. Select a savings plan type based on your business requirements. The following table describes the savings plan types.
If your business depends on ECS instances that are deployed across different regions or belong to multiple ECS instance families, we recommend that you purchase general-purpose savings plans.
If your business has stable resource usage for an extended period of time and you want to obtain the highest possible discount, we recommend that you use savings plans to maximize cost savings and meet your business requirements. For example, if your business has stable resource usage with a limited number of predictable load changes, you can purchase a three-year, All Upfront, ECS compute savings plan.
Item | ECS compute savings plan | General-purpose savings plan | ||
Scenario | This type of savings plan is suitable for scenarios in which resource usage is stable, such as during system upgrades and cluster deployment. In these scenarios, instances may be frequently created and released, but the overall usage is stable. | This type of savings plan is suitable for scenarios in which resource usage is stable, such as during system upgrades and cluster deployment. In these scenarios, instances may be frequently created and released, but the overall usage is stable. | ||
Region flexibility | Not supported. | Supported. | ||
Resource flexibility | This type of savings plan applies to pay-as-you-go ECS instances and immediate capacity reservations of a specific instance family or instance family set and pay-as-you-go elastic container instances created based on specific ECS instance types from the instance family or instance family set. Note For information about savings plan-eligible items, see Eligible resources and deduction rules of savings plans. | In addition to all items eligible for ECS compute savings plans, this type of savings plan applies to pay-as-you-go data disks, disk performance bursts, and the vCPUs and memory of pay-as-you-go elastic container instances created based on vCPU and memory specifications. | ||
Instance type flexibility | Allows changes between instance types in an instance family or an instance family set. | Allows changes between instance types. | ||
Select a payment option
Alibaba Cloud provides the following payment options for savings plans: All Upfront, Partial Upfront, and No Upfront. The discount provided by a savings plan varies based on the payment option. Savings plans of higher upfront payment options provide higher discounts and can be used to offset higher pay-as-you-go resource spend. Select a payment option based on your business requirements.
All Upfront: Full payment is required at the time of purchase. No other costs or additional hourly fees are generated within the duration of the savings plan.
Partial Upfront: Partial payment (approximately 50% of the full amount) is required at the time of purchase, and the remainder is paid at a discounted hourly rate within the duration of the savings plan.
No Upfront: No upfront payment is required at the time of purchase. You are charged at a discounted hourly rate for every hour within the duration of the savings plan. Your ECS usage determines whether you can use the No Upfront payment option. To check whether you can use the No Upfront payment option, submit a ticket.
Select a duration
When you purchase a general-purpose or ECS compute savings plan, set the duration of the savings plan to 1 Year or 3 Years.
Calculate an hourly commitment amount
Each savings plan can be applied to offset discounted hourly fees for pay-as-you-go resources up to the specified hourly commitment that you made when you purchased the plan. Within the hourly commitment, the fees for eligible pay-as-you-go resources are discounted and then offset. After you select a type of savings plan that you want to purchase, calculate the hourly commitment amount to maximize the savings plan and cost savings. When you purchase a savings plan, calculate the total commitment amount based on the hourly commitment amount. The following section describes how to calculate an hourly commitment amount. You can calculate the hourly commitment amount of savings plans based on your business requirements.
Specify an effective time and place and pay for the order
If you use a Resource Access Management (RAM) user, the RAM user must have the permissions to purchase savings plans. For more information, see Grant a RAM user the permissions to purchase savings plans.
After you determine all purchase options, including the hourly commitment amount, for a savings plan, go to the savings plan buy page and configure the parameters based on your determined purchase options to purchase a savings plan. A total configuration fee is automatically calculated based on the duration and hourly commitment amount that you specify.
Set the Activation Type parameter to Immediately Activate or Activated at Specified Point in Time.
Immediately Activate: The savings plan takes effect on the hour (zero minutes and zero seconds past the hour) when you complete the payment.
Activated at Specified Point in Time: Specify a point in time at which the savings plan takes effect. The specified point in time is an on-the-hour time and can be up to one year later than the point in time when you place the order.